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Monday, August 27, 2012

From the Library of C.S. Lewis, a Review

From the Library of
C.S. Lewis is a reference book filled with selections from C.S. Lewis’
personal library. This book, compiled by
James Stuart Bell and Anthony Dawson, is broken into eighteen sections. The primary focus of the book is to highlight
works (and writers) who influenced Lewis’ spiritual journey, as Lewis is
regarded as one of the finest Christian thinkers of the 20th Century. There are a few other sections that are not
dedicated to religion (such as a section on fantasy & imagination), but
these are definitely the minority of page takers.

I found the concept interesting and so I requested a
review copy from the publisher. I like
Lewis (especially Mere Christianity),
but I’m not fanatic about him by no means.
I’m also finding myself getting a bit more interested in biographical
works as I’m getting older, and I’m a believer that you can tell a lot about a
person by the types of things they read.

Unfortunately, my initial excitement quickly faded. Page after page I read through archaic texts
and dated sermon notes. The material was
interesting, but my daily dose of deep theology and introspective meditation could
not handle deluge. As such, I took to
skimming things, and that’s not what I wanted to do. So then I decided to read devotionally, just
picking a page a day or something and seeing what was said. I noticed a lot of repeated writers and
works, and I suppose these were more influential on Lewis than others, but
that’s pure speculation on my part.

Each selection is presented with a title, its source, the
text, and then a mini author biography (Twitter-esque). This format is perfect, and each selection
spans at most three pages. Much of the
text is heavy and deep, as I’ve said, and I recommend it in small chunks to
avoid duress. This format inevitably
leads to bias, as quoting out of context is wont, but I believe the intent of
Bell & Dawson is to tease the Reader to dig deeper into the cited works.

From the Library of
C.S. Lewis is an interesting little reference book. It is dry and sometimes complicated, but that
will fluctuate based on the Reader and the day.
There are many pearls of wisdom in this book, and it was a pleasure to
think about how they affected Lewis’ works (and life). I would have liked more descriptive
correlations between works and Lewis’ life, but that was outside the scope of
the book. To a casual Lewis fan this may
not be the book for you, but if you would like to find out what kind of things
C.S. Lewis liked to read, then by all means check out From the Library of C.S. Lewis.

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FTC Thingy: I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. Nothing more was required. I was not coerced or bribed to review positively or negatively, nor was I offered any extra incentives for a positive review (i.e., baked goods, especially cookies). As such, this review is reflective of my inner self's inner self.

3 comments:

Ah, sorry this one was a dry disappointment. I was excited when I popped over here and saw the cover and then that excitement faded as I read your review. As I still have some books written by Lewis to get to I won't be adding this one to a must-read list anytime soon. :)